![17-02-2009%2014-52-04[1]](https://www.mikewilson.cc/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/17022009201452041.png "17-02-2009%2014-52-04[1]")
Dear readers. I’m looking for beta testers for my latest application, InstaTrans. It’s a utility for making fast translations of text on your desktop, it’s quicker, more convenient and easier to use than the web-page translation services and translations can be easily compared between them so it’s easier to get the translation you need.
The original idea came out of a small contract requirement to translate a customer’s English-only application into several different languages. Currently the only way to do this was to parse the strings out of an existing application and copy/paste each phrase into a translation web page or hire the services of a professional linguist. InstaTrans was born to save time and make performing regular translations easier.
InstaTrans has a very small footprint and once installed and run it will sit tidily in your system tray, waiting for the special hotkey (currently fixed to CTRL+SHIFT+C) to spring into action. InstaTrans can be run in the usual way from a desktop or program files shortcut, in case you don’t like shortcut keys 🙂
Once running, the software will allow you to easily and quickly perform multiple translations in multiple languages across several different translations services (currently only Google Translate and Yahoo Babelfish are supported) in a much more convenient way than using the web based translation services.
Almost feature complete…
In development are some cool new features to allow you to type full sentences and have these translated on the fly into another language, say if you were relaxing and playing an online multiplayer game or working in a conference call and wanted to talk to someone in French, German or Russian, you could with a couple of keystrokes, perform automatic real time translations. Coming up is another cool new improvement called “In place translation”, which will allow you to select some text in your internet browser, email or word document, perform a CTRL+Right click and instantly have the text translated into the language of your choice.
Since I’m at the point where the feature set is 80% complete and have a usable 1.1 beta, I am looking for beta testers to download and trial the software, report bugs and suggest some improvements.
Get involved and get free software!
If you’d like to get involved, please head over to the product page, download InstaTrans and let me know if you find any bugs (preferably via email – support [at] evolvedsoftwarestudios.com). As a reward for helping out, and for a short period, I will provide a full retail licence for the software to all beta testers who get involved and report meaningful bugs!
UPDATE (18th March 2009) – InstaTrans 1.4 BETA is now available!
https://www.mikewilson.cc/2009/03/17/instatrans-14-beta-now-with-instant-translations/
Version 1.2 Beta 2 has been released (which fixes a crashing bug)
G’day Mike,
Downloaded the first beta. Seems to be working nicely, looking forward to testing some more languages!
Cheers Scott!
The next beta version is almost ready and it’s even better with some properly usable features 🙂
Feel absolutely free to be critical too; I’ve had quite a few objections to the software (the main one notably – why do this when Google et. al. provide for free?).
For the answer to that question, see the next version 😉
Mike,
Yep, I’ve seen a couple of objections in a forum you posted in. For my part I actually played with something like this a couple of years ago but never got around to finishing it off. Not going to happen now either ! 🙂
I’m not a fan of opening my browser for everything. I like desktop applications. They are faster, familiar and more convenient IMHO.